Recently, a new judge was assigned in a PAL-member national class action lawsuit, In re Modafinil Antitrust Litigation (“Provigil”). The case has been all too quiet since late 2006, when Defendant Cephalon filed for a still-pending motion to dismiss. Ho

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is receiving a lot of advice on how to tighten its conflict-of-interest standards, and much of it favors increasing transparency and expanding disclosure.  Sixty-two organizations responded this week to a call for p

The Supreme Court has refused to review the decision of the First Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold New Hampshire’s prescribing data-mining law, IMS v. Ayotte. That decision, made last November, unanimously overturned an earlier district court ruling to

In a rare move, the FDA seized shipments of 33 generic drugs from three Michigan manufacturing plants that failed to pass inspections following a 2008 warning letter from the agency. Federal marshals took action after Caraco Pharmaceutical Laboratories fa

Sen. Grassley has written letters to 23 medical schools that didn’t respond to those persistent students over at the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) when they asked each medical school in the country for its conflict-of-interest policies. The

Today’s New York Times reports that PHARMA has finally staked out their agenda in health care reform – avoiding cost controls, and keeping generics off the market. An undisclosed deal announced this past Sunday between the drug industry, Sen. Baucus, and

This afternoon, three House committees released their joint health care reform bill.  The product of careful coordination by the Energy and Commerce, Education and Labor, and of Ways and Means committees includes Physician Payments Sunshine Provisions, a

The American Medical Association has shied away from another internal report on physicians’ reliance on industry funding for continuing medical education. The report, a weakened version of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs’ original call to end

One-fifth of the 149 U.S. medical schools improved their pharmaceutical conflict-of-interest policies in the last year, according to the 2009 American Medical Student Association PharmFree Scorecard, out today. Still, many lag behind - dozens of schools r